The Death of Ydain, interview with Sommer Nectarhoff
I had an interesting email conversation with Sommer Nectarhoff, English major and author of The Book of Lokk. We’re talking about his Death of Ydain, a fantasy epic modeled on Le Morte d’Artur and written in Middle English.
Me: In what ways is the Death of Ydain like the Arthurian legends?
Sommer: Part of what makes the old Knights of the Round Table stories so awesome is just how strangely they foreign they are to us now. While we tend only to think of dragons and knights when we think of magic back then, there were all sorts of other things going on. For instance, one of my favorite Arthurian legends involves a knight traveling through the forest and coming across a fountain, but when he drinks from it a terrible storm comes and destroys the entire forest. Of course, it happens to be a magical fountain, and soon a king comes along whose lands were destroyed, and it is his duty to challenge whoever drinks from his fountain. In the Death of Ydain there is all sorts of strange, unexplained magic—the type of things that get dreamed up when tales are told and twisted for hundreds of years.
Me: How did you go about translating the book into Middle English?
Sommer: I didn’t translate the book into Middle English—I wrote it in Middle English! However, it’s not quite like Chaucer or Syr Mallory’s original “le Morte d’Arthur”. While the grammar and vocabulary I’ve used are based on the written language of the late 1400s (near the beginning of early Modern Shakespeare), I’ve used modernized spelling.
Me: What are some things you did in the Death of Ydain that you couldn’t do in Modern English?
I wouldn’t say that there are things I couldn’t do in the Death of Ydain because of the language itself, but rather because of the way language was spoken and written at the time I was trying to emulate. People were still experimenting with English prose, and writers like Mallory relied more on exposition than dialogue. And while there was certainly plenty of brutality in their writing, it was taken much more nonchalantly, and there was certainly very little graphic sex. But because of this I couldn’t remain true to the source materials while also going for the “grim-dark” tone we see today in a lot of contemporary fantasy. For this reason, while still being pretty complicated, mature, and high-brow, the Death of Ydain is in general a lot more of a fun book than a dark one.
Me: Will it be difficult for Modern English speakers to understand?
Sommer: Not at all! I wrote the Death of Ydain because after extensively reading old Arthurian legends in a non-academic setting I absolutely loved them. The way language was used back then—while maybe not meant to be this way at the time—is so fun in itself to read as a modern fantasy-lover. There are definitely quirks to the grammar and word usage, but for any archaisms I’ve included a glossary in the back, so that if a knight calls someone a “doted varlet” you’ll know he means “idiot servant,” or if a giant sings in “dulcet” tones you’ll know he has a particularly sweet voice.
